Generate Design Harmony: Creating a Product Style Guide

Intro

Designing and turning a digital product into a mature and polished one requires standardization, organization, and consistent communication. Design teams use a Product Style Guide as a single source of truth for brand elements, messaging, and design to achieve this.

Creating a Product Style Guide takes time but greatly streamlines the design process and ensures alignment among team members when designing new products. If you want to develop a Product Style Guide for your design team, this article provides all the information you need to get started. It covers what a Product Style Guide is and what you should include to facilitate efficient and consistent design, resulting in a great user experience.

What is a Product Style Guide?

A Product Style Guide is a resource that contains all the necessary details related to your product's user interface. It ensures continuity throughout the product's design by defining elements such as typography, colors, layout, and approved components based on brand guidelines.

A well-thought-out Product Style Guide ensures the implementation of the unity principle of design across your entire product, regardless of the screen a user interacts with.

By creating a Product Style Guide for your product, you'll have a comprehensive collection of design decisions and instructions to ensure that all future designs align with the look and feel of your brand.

How can a Product Style Guide help you?

Creating a Product Style Guide early in developing a digital product saves time making design decisions and avoids unnecessary UI debt caused by inconsistent design choices. It also ensures that the principles of design are met by providing predefined choices in your Product Style Guide.

A Product Style Guide is handy when growing a design team. By providing the Product Style Guide to new designers, they can quickly adapt the product's look and feel into their designs.

How do you create a Product Style Guide?

Creating a Product Style Guide improves design collaboration and communication within your team. However, it requires discussing all the design details for your product, no matter how minor they may seem. Deciding how each element should look to maintain consistency when introducing new features or aspect ratios is essential.

What should you include in a Product Style Guide?

Your Product Style Guide can be dynamic and include various design elements and components. Depending on the maturity of your design organization, you may start with broader categories and then get more granular as you develop a concrete style guide for your digital product.

Most Product Style Guides generally include documentation for typography, iconography, layouts and grids, color palettes, and components.

1. Typography

The typography section of your Product Style Guide should identify the selected font for your product, the range of font sizes and weights for headings hierarchy, and additional typographical elements like link appearance. It's also important to consider font compatibility across browsers and operating systems for web-based products.

2. Iconography

Icons are a simple yet effective way to enhance the accessibility of a product. They can be paired with typography to clarify the purpose or destination of an element. Icons also help organize complex systems by representing controls, data, tools, navigation, etc.

3. Layouts and grids

Layouts and grids provide frameworks for organizing the visual elements of your digital product. They ensure consistency and continuity as users navigate from screen to screen. With a standardized grid and layout, the components of your product may appear cohesive when users transition between pages.

4. Color palette

An agreed-upon color palette is essential for brand consistency and setting the tone and feel of the product. Color plays a vital role in shaping the user's experience. Therefore, it's crucial to maintain consistency in the chosen color palette throughout the entire user journey.

5. Components

The components you choose and how you present them significantly impact the user experience. Standardizing the components used in your product helps clarify their functions — preventing user confusion. Consider creating a Design System alongside your Product Style Guide to provide more detailed instructions for each component.

A Design System allows you to document and organize various components, including patterns that define how components should look when combined. For example, a modal may include text fields, typography, and buttons. Implementing a design system saves your design team time and facilitates developer handoff for implementing your designs.

Product Style Guide vs. Design System

A Product Style Guide focuses on the product's overall aesthetics, while a Design System dictates how the components within that aesthetic should look and function. The style guide ensures designers use the right fonts and colors, while the Design System maintains consistency in the navigation bar, buttons, search bar, and other components.

The Product Style Guide and Design System should be developed with accessibility in mind to avoid unintentional accessibility barriers in your design.

Instead of choosing between a Product Style Guide or a Design System, it's beneficial to have both to ensure consistency and standardization throughout the design process.

Wrapping up

Now is the perfect time for you to start if you still need to create a Product Style Guide. Regardless of your design team's size, a Product Style Guide is a valuable resource that saves time. Start thinking about your product's desired look and feel and document it in a style guide. This way, you prevent UI inconsistencies and provide your team with a single source of truth.

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My flexible pricing model

Working with traditional freelancer/agency pricing can get complicated. My pricing model is simpler.

Simply hire me by the month at a fixed cost.

Need to pause the work? That’s fine. Since there aren’t any long-term contracts, we can pick things up later when the time is right.

Schedule a consultation call to discuss my specific rates, go over any questions you have, and walk through the next steps.

Prefer email instead? Reach out to me at hello@timhaskins.studio

A little about me

With deep roots in brand, design, and technology, I specialize in delivering best-in-class UX & UI. I've done this for hundreds of companies around the globe over the past 25 years.

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Client history

I've worked with many types of clients worldwide. From small startups all the way up to Nike, Adidas, Xerox, Williams-Sonoma, and Lowe's — to name a few.

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My purpose

Everything I do is centered around helping people live fuller lives — a driver for what gets me up each morning. That can take many shapes, such as pro-bono work for non-profits, mentoring other designers, or designing products that impact lives.

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Life-altering moment:

In 2016, I suffered a life-altering traumatic brain injury and lost my ability to do much of anything. Without the ability to fully comprehend language, living with constant vertigo and depression, and the loss of my creative problem-solving skills — my life was turned upside down.

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Fast-forward to today. I consider myself one of the lucky few who fully recovered from an injury like that. I have a deeper appreciation for life now; from mundane tasks to relationships to my craft — which shows in the quality of my work.

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My superpowers

Translating strategy into a marketable product, simplifying the complex, pinpointing a person's hidden pain, and breathing new life into outdated UIs.

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Additional facts:

I live in Portland, Oregon, once had a 30-person design agency for over a decade, launched my own SaaS products, and am raising 3 boys (the latter being the hardest but most rewarding!)

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FAQ

How do we know we're a good fit?

I’m very selective with the companies I work with, and I admit I’m not the right fit for everyone. Here are a few indicators that I’m not the right fit:

1. If you seek full-time hires: I’m not for those seeking permanent, full-time roles; I specialize in fractional, high-impact engagements.

2. If you prefer in-house solutions: If you believe all expertise should come from within your existing team, I won’t be the right fit.

3. If you micro-manage: I'm a seasoned expert who thrives on driving outcomes and high autonomy. I’m very collaborative, but if you want to hand-hold/dictate, I won’t be the right fit.

4. If you’re only looking for quick fixes: While I can often deliver quick wins, I focus on sustainable growth and long-term impact.

5. If budget is your only concern: My value lies in the elite talent and strategic expertise I bring; if cost-cutting is your sole priority, I may not meet your needs.

What is your pricing model?

My pricing model is based on a monthly engagement rather than an hourly rate or a long-term contract. As you’ve likely experienced, multiple changes, discoveries, and pivots can occur when building a product, requiring a flexible pricing model that can ebb and flow with you.

Within my model, I offer four pricing tiers, starting at $1,500/month (USD). Clients choose from one of the monthly pricing tiers depending on the amount of work needed.

‍Example scenarioIn Month 1, a new client chooses my lowest tier to get things started and trial my services. Month 2 requires more work and they’re getting value, so they choose the second pricing tier. Then, they pause for a few months as their team implements my design. After that, they return for another month to have me audit and refine what the developers have implemented.

My clients love my model because they don’t get nickel-and-dimed for changes or feel beholden to a contract written months ago that’s woefully outdated compared to their current situation.

Can you work within a fixed budget amount?

While my model is based on a monthly engagement to optimize my client’s budgets, I have made exceptions in the past. Some of my clients have had fixed budgets that they need to work within, and in certain cases, I can work within that structure. Let’s talk more about your situation and see if it will work.

How happy are your clients?

What tells me my clients are happy (and see value in my work) is that I have 100% client repeat rate — something I strive for — which is reflected in my approach, style, and work ethic.

This means that every client has come back a second time to continue our work together. They wouldn’t do that if they didn’t see value or weren’t happy.

I also survey my clients every quarter, and each one has repeatedly given me a 5-star rating.

Do you have a team of people, or is it just you?

It’s just me. My ideal client prefers working with an individual rather than an agency or team. They want someone experienced who focuses on their project and communicates directly with them — without the bureaucracy or cost of an agency.

If you choose to work with me, I will be your main point of contact. I will be the one designing your product; fully grasping your product, strategy, and business needs.

How do you manage projects?

I use a platform called ClickUp to manage and communicate project updates to clients. It also hosts documentation, Gantt charts, and Kanban boards.

Slack is the primary communication tool for me and my clients. I can either add your team to a private Slack channel in my account or, if you already have your own (or Teams), I can join yours instead.

Often my clients have their own platforms, like Jira, Monday, or Trello. I’ve used those and many others and am happy to explore what it would look like for me to use your tool.

What do you deliver?

What I deliver can vary depending on your needs. The most common deliverables are flow diagrams, wireframes, and dev-ready Figma design files (including Design System documentation.) Secondary deliverables include things like interactive prototypes, animated UI concepts, custom icons, audits/user research documentation.

Do you specialize in our industry?

Over the past 25 years, I have worked in dozens of industries versus specializing in just one. My ideal client values this because they want fresh ideas and someone thinks differently. They want their product to be unique and innovative, not follow the same tired strategies.

When we collaborate, I take a deep dive into your business and industry, understanding it thoroughly. This way, I can provide insights that significantly enhance your product's design and user experience.

We need designs yesterday — can you help us?

I hear this often and I totally get it. You have a real sense of urgency and could already be behind on your goals due to one factor or another.

As you’ll see, I can turn around designs very quickly and we can get some quick wins if need be. But to make a product that really stands out, one that meets your goals, and users love, takes time, thought, and research. And while I do have a thorough process for getting us there, my process is designed to be flexible for getting quick wins and long-term success.

Why wouldn’t we just hire a cheap designer from one of those freelancer sites?

Sure, you can hire a designer on platforms like Fiverr or Upwork, but they likely won’t meet your expectations and you’ll typically get what you pay for.

Some clients I've spoken to tried that route before working with me. They found that the design quality was not up to par, and the designers mainly followed instructions without offering innovative ideas. It’s a gamble.

My clients need someone who will deeply engage with their project, show enthusiasm for their product, and propose creative solutions, rather than simply executing tasks as instructed.